Think MTV's Street Team '08 once again puts MTV News at the leading edge of election news coverage. I have long been a fan of MTV News and its coverage of electoral politics. Back in the early '90's, while I was researching presidential use of television to manipulate public opinion for my dissertation, I was an avid viewer of MTV News. Kurt Loder and Tabitha Soren were doing some really edgy stuff, from gathering college students into a Boston University auditorium to measure their real-time reactions to the presidential debates, to Tabitha Soren interviewing George H.W. Bush on the back platform of a moving train the Sunday before election day (who could forget Poppy referring to "MTV afficionados," showing how completely disconnected he was from young voters?), MTV offered a new breed of television news.

And that tradition continues on today, as MTV News migrates most of its news programming online, including the beta site Think MTV. Think MTV's foray into election news coverage is an ambitious project called Street Team '08. MTV has recruited and hired 51 amateur journalists to blog about the election. 51, as in one for every state plus one for DC. Supervising Producer of Street Team '08 Michael Scogin talks more about the project here:

Semi-pro campaign journalism gets a mid-term review; Republican consultant launches NoJohn.com; Chuck DeFeo shares his secrets for getting attention online; Obama gets naked with his earmarks, will Clinton follow?; and now you can listen in too on those campaign conference calls.

Last night on MTV, four candidates presented young voters with their closing arguments and got another lesson from Ron Paul in how online organizing really works.

Live blogging "Closing Arguments," the MySpace/MTV Super Dialogue featuring Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Ron Paul, and Mike Huckabee.

Matt Bai talks to Tracy Russo, of the John Edwards campaign, about how to move on; Barack Obama and Ron Paul are added to the roster for MTV and MySpace's Closing Arguments event; MTV's Street Team '08 is armed and ready to report on Super Tuesday; PolFeeds collects and spits out the online content produced by the candidates, Members of Congress, the White House, and your grandmother; catch video of Josh Levy and Sarah Stirland on Brian Lehrer this week; Hillary Clinton announces a townhall meeting and invites supporters to submit questions via the web, text, and YouTube; and Barack Obama has raised $50 billion in the last 60 seconds.

Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee hope that the MTV/MySpace Candidate Dialogue can increase their appeal to young voters on Super Tuesday.

MTV takes another innovative step into social media with the launch of its new citizen-journalist press corps.

Compete releases new data showing an online surge for Huckabee and Edwards, but Paul is still king; MTV launches its ambitious "Street Team '08" citizen journalism project; YouTube asks Iowans to videotape the run-up to the caucuses; the Electoral Map analyzes the political uses of mapping; a British Member of Parliament loses his identity, on Facebook anyway; Marc Ambinder sees an Edwards surge on and off the web.

Some quick thoughts about tonight’s MTV/MySpace presidential dialogue (gosh that’s a mouthful; we need an acronym).

I'm here in Manchester, and it's all snowy and New England-y. The folks behind tonight's MTV/MySpace Presidential Dialogue with John McCain have flown me up to cover the event, and I couldn't resist the chance to watch the first Republican to participate in a series in which Democrats Barack Obama and John Edwards have done well, but didn't face very critical audiences. This, I think, will be different. (The organizers have paid for me to be here, but that doesn't preclude me being critical of the event.)